CultSearcher

Detection of cultural heritage remains by remote sensing

During construction work, ranging from building new motorways to private houses, archaeological sites are sometimes discovered, thereby delaying work. For motorways crossing through agricultural land, encountering buried remains of cultural heritage occurs frequently in parts of Norway, whereas for erecting a private home, the prospect of finding historical remains seems like a big lottery, with large negative prizes for the few finders.

As an example, a number of destroyed burial mounds were discovered when a new motorway section of the E-18 highway through parts of Vestfold County was built a few years back. This delayed construction work by a year. More sections of E-18 through Vestfold are to be built this summer and coming years.

The Norwegian Directorate for Cultural Heritage and some of the 19 Norwegian county administrations see a need to map potential locations for cultural heritage sites. This will help planning authorities to avoid cultural heritage hot spots when future land use is decided. Also, this will add more knowledge about the early history of Norway.

The purpose of this research project is to assess whether high resolution remotely sensed imagery can be used to locate potential cultural heritage sites

For more information contact: Øivind Due Trier

Back to Section for Earth Observation